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Jan 29, 2018

Coming from 1.3 bn in 2017. Is there a bigger advertiser out there? The 2 bn are budgeted to turn the 8 billion spend for content in 2018 into business. It is believed that the majority of the money goes into digital, and there into programmatic buying specifically, executed in-house as Netflix is a data hoarder and analyzer anyway:

Reuters Institute made a survey among 190+ media and publisher executives. Many interesting insights, among others that nearly 3 out of 4 execs want to experiment with AI to improve recommendations, automate workflows, optimize ad targeting and pricing as well as AI driven paywalls that try to predict how likely you are to become a subscriber based on which stories you consume in which frequency, and when the best time will come to make you an offer. Also, publishers and media will enter the platforms in the "fight for the home", like Amazon Echo, Home Pod etc. Much more insights in this PDF:

Highly interesting data published by recode about the development of traffic referrals via Facebook from Jan2017 to Dec 2017 - so before the new algorithm kicked in: for example, ESPN -65%, WaPo -66%, Rolling Stone -81%. Also, some surprising numbers: Buzzfeed's share of Facebook Traffic in December 2017 seems to have been only 16.9%. I can remember times where this was way above 50%. More here:

As a user, I am always disappointed by Netflix' and Amazon's inability to deeply understand what I might need at a certain point in time (compared to Spotify's Discover weekly, for example). As a consultant, I understand how complex this is and and am always fascinated when I get a blimpse into these systems. This article about teasers on Netflix is highly interesting and many insights can be applied to ecommerce or publishers - it's "A/B testing on steroids". With the steroids being machine learning.

I think the era of individually motorized mobility - no matter how the motor works - has to end at least in cities. All innovations we are talking about (end of combustion engines, "human logistics, driverless cars etc.) will ultimately lead to new forms of public or group transports. Owning a device for your personal mobility will be a total luxury, or will phase out completely. In cities. And this will make sense not only economically - read this article here.

Jan 7, 2018

The Co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, Dan Tapscott, makes 10 predictions about blockchain and crypto for 2018. I have spent a great amount of time during Christmas and New Year's on reading up and digging into this area, a lot more than the occasional surface scratching of the past years. Honestly: I am shocked that yes, in every meeting and every conference of us people in "traditional" digital business, we mentioned Bitcoin and blockchain. And we talked more about our portfolios and coins as investment vehicles. I admit: We didn't take it serious enough. We should be in constant alarm mode, and I don't mean investing 1k in the next Bitcoin. I mean that the nerds are taking over, and rightfully so. The more I understand, the more I see that blockchain technology is our chance to make things right. To create applications the way the internet was designed to work. Many years back, I had the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow printed on plexiglass. It's on the wall next to my desk. The last few years, it was frustrating to read it. But If you look at it from a blockchain perspective now: We may be back on track.

So my new years resolution is this: deeply, and I mean it, deeply understand the stuff. Find a positioning for a digital strategist in this. Or change my job. And in order to understand how fundamental the change to expect will be, read this article: